The Central Government might rope in private agencies for accreditation of educational institutes. The Union Minister for HRD, Prakash Javadekar said on Friday that the government had approached IITs and IIMs too in this regard. The Union HRD Minister had earlier also announced that more agencies will be roped in to speed up the assessment and accreditation process for Higher Education Institutes.
"To improve the quality of education, we are making the accreditation process more scientific and tough. The government wants to increase the strength of the National Board of Accreditation and the National Assessment and Accreditation Council so that more number of institutions can be accredited," Javadekar said during the national conference on "Positioning India on the Global Education Map".
Citing that ranking and rating of educational institutes, increases competitiveness, Javadekar said that this inspires institutes to invent ways to improve overall performance of the institute.
"Today, because of the National Institutional Ranking Framework, every institute has constituted an internal committee to improve their ranking. Students also take into account the institution's ranking before taking admission," he added.
He also said that graded autonomy will boost quality of education being imparted at Higher Education Institutes. With graded autonomy, institutes will remain under the aegis of UGC and still be free to design and offer new courses, off campus centers, skill development courses, research parks and any other new academic programmes.
"They will also have the freedom to hire foreign faculty, enroll foreign students, give incentive-based emoluments to the faculty, enter academic collaborations and run open distance learning programmes," he added.
The bid to induct more accreditation agencies is not new. In August this year, UGC had notified University Grants Commission (Recognition and Monitoring of Assessment & Accreditation Agencies) Regulations, 2018 and had announced setting up of an Accreditation Advisory Council (AAC) for recognition of Assessment and Accrediting Agencies (AAAs).
Any government or semi-government agency was eligible to apply for recognition as an accreditation agency.
